By Darius’s reckoning, this was his eighth or ninth recurrence of the malaria he had contracted half a dozen years ago. Not so bad, really. He could suffer from gout instead, if only he ate and drank to excess. That had definitely not been his problem. Alcohol was damn difficult to get hold of in Moslem lands, and there had been long stretches when he and Malcolm were lucky to share a bowl of couscous. But his luck was about to turn, if only he could get through tomorrow night.
He lathered up his lank hair and plunged down into the tub to rinse. He needed barbering, from what he’d seen at the club last night. Short hair à la Brutus was all the rage—he must look like the savage he was to the ton. But they were not above bidding at his auction. Darius had held several successful auctions over the years after returning from his buying trips since he’d closed his father’s shop, usually in rented halls. Tomorrow would be a change of pace, hopefully more conducive to sales. There would be wine.
And there would be a woman.
Slicking his wet hair away from his face, he lay back in comparative peace. The knives had eased in his stomach, his head was not pounding, his skin not completely shriveled in the cooling water. For the first time in some hours, he felt almost well. He might have fallen asleep if the front door didn’t slam upstairs.
It wouldn’t be Malcolm—he’d return the way he left, through the tradesman’s entrance. Darius sat up as he heard the light footsteps tripping down the kitchen stairs. Pru. At least he smelled more appetizing than he had a short while ago. He pasted on a smile and hoped she wouldn’t flee once she caught sight of him au naturel. He hadn’t counted on her coming home to find him in such a compromising position, but was damn glad she didn’t get lost in London. Even in daylight, anything could happen, even in the most civilized city in the world. He dreaded to think about Pru on the streets of Cairo.
So intent was she on pulling down her washing that she didn’t see him in the corner. Darius cleared his throat, and Pru dropped a snowy white chemise onto the kitchen slates.
“Oh! I wasn’t expecting to find you downstairs. Are you feeling better?”
She stood her ground, wasn’t a bit missish about coming upon him naked in the bathtub. Of course, the enameled tin was deep and only his upper torso was exposed. She’d seen—and touched and kissed and suckled and licked—it all before anyway. To Darius, their night felt like a lifetime ago, long enough at any rate for him to have recovered and begin to stir again beneath the soap bubbles.
“Now that I’m seeing you. You are a sight for sore eyes.” He watched Pru’s cheeks color becomingly. “Once in Egypt,” he said, “I contracted opthalmia, and I couldn’t see anything for days. It was frightfully inconvenient for an antiquities dealer to be unable to distinguish a clay pot from copper.”
“How dreadful. I’ve read about that. It struck Napoleon’s soldiers and scientists, did it not?”
Darius was surprised she knew of it, and regretful he’d brought the subject up. She’d think him a total weakling, prey to every disease known to mankind. Next he’d break out in hives and erupt in warts.
“Yes. But I’m totally cured. Totally. Where did you go?”
She smiled. “Out.” She turned back to her clothesline, efficiently stripping it of her unremarkable underwear. Darius covered his erection with a washcloth.
“Out where?”
She sat at the table, smoothing and folding her clothing into neat squares. “You’ll see. I thought I might do kind of a rehearsal for tomorrow night after dinner.”
Darius shifted in the bath. “I am much improved. I don’t think I shall require your assistance after all.”
“Pooh. From what Malcolm tells me, your indisposition can last for days, and it comes and goes willy-nilly.”
“Pay no attention to Malcolm. He’s an old fraud.”
Pru nodded. “That may be, but he does seem to have your best interests at heart. No, I’m determined to help you. Looking forward to it, in fact.” She bundled up her clothes and rose. “I presume Malcolm is somewhere about to help you back upstairs?”
“Nearly. He’s due back any minute.”
Pru frowned. “I told him not to leave you alone! Stupid man!”
Darius was not sure to whom she was referring, but decided not to take offense. He had been demonstrably stupid on numerous occasions. He was being stupid now lusting after Prudence Thorne in a basement kitchen. It wasn’t as if he could do anything about his inconvenient desire. A chill prickled down his spine, and he realized the water was stone cold. He really should try to get out.
But not in front of Pru. He still had some pride, and she didn’t need to see him stumble up the stairs, if he could even get to them on his own.
“You’re turning blue. How long have you been sitting down here?”
She stood over him like a stern schoolmistress, not that he’d ever had one. There had been male tutors and a short spell at Eton until it was discovered what his father did for a living. Darius had defended the family honor with his fists until he purposely flunked out.
“I’m all right.” He clenched his teeth to keep them from chattering.
“I’ll fix you a cup of tea.”
She flew around the kitchen as if his very life depended on a hot cup of India tea. Watching her made him dizzy again, so he shut his eyes to keep the walls from wobbling. Blast, but he hated this feeling of helplessness. He ignored her scolding and sank back into the water. When the room turned mercifully silent, he knew she was near and opened one eye.
“Can you manage to hold it yourself?”
“Damn it, Pru. What do you take me for?” Darius meant to growl, but somehow sounded more like a puppy than a dog. He grasped the mug she held out with two shaking hands and took a sip.
Her cool hand swept across his forehead, and she clucked her disapproval. “You should never have gotten out of bed.”
“I had to. I stank.”
“Well, you smell lovely now. But you would have been better off to wait for me to give you a sponge bath.”
The tea scalded his throat. “Delightful as that sounds, it is hardly appropriate.” Not to mention damned embarrassing.
Pru would make someone a comforting mama, but he was not her child. “Does your head hurt?”
He shrugged. She slipped behind him, massaging his temples as he tried to hang on to his tea. Her fingers were magic, and he wished with all his heart they would move somewhat lower.
“Where did Malcolm go anyway?”
“The wine merchant in the next street. There will be refreshments tomorrow night, the better to part our guests with the contents of their wallets.”
“Very clever. You’ve done an auction before?”
“Not quite like this. But what we lack in space, we’ll make up for in amenities.”
“And I’m one of them!” she trilled, sounding altogether too happy about rubbing shoulders with the most disreputable lechers in London. Darius would have to lock her in her room.
Chapter Ten
Darius had eaten some of his supper and was feeling almost fit. He’d been spared the indignity of Pru helping him back to his room before he was encased in ice by Malcolm’s return. His sheets were still fresh, his hair still fluffy, his resolve unwavering. Pru could not participate in tomorrow’s events—if she was discovered, the scandal would indelibly stain her for the rest of her days. Darius could not hold himself responsible for the ruination of a lady—he may have been a bit casual all his life, but damn it, he did have some honor. She might think this all a lark, but the auction was serious business.
He should be unconscious after Malcolm’s sleeping draught, but he was far too restless, and too determined to get Pru into his bed again. The pages of the book he’d selected went unread as his mind kept returning to Pru. Pru, pale against the sheets. Pru bent over, her voluptuous bottom waiting to be worshipped. Pru above him, riding him to oblivion. Three days ago he did not know the woman existed. There was something very wrong with him, beside
s the malaria, to be so fixated on his brother’s cousin-in-law.
Cyrus had come calling tonight, and Pru had flashed upstairs to hide and hadn’t yet come back down. His brother hadn’t stayed long once he discovered Darius naked in his sickbed. Cyrus had never been much good with any unpleasantness, and a few artful groans from Darius guaranteed he’d go back to his bride. All was apparently well on Rex Place, which should soothe Pru. Despite her irritation at the elopement, he knew Pru cared for Sophy’s happiness. God help Cyrus if he ever took a step wrong, for Pru was a force to be reckoned with.
It certainly wasn’t because she was physically imposing. She wasn’t tall or especially beautiful—she was more wren than cardinal. But from the moment she’d lectured him thinking he was his brother, he had felt an unexpected flicker of desire for her. And now that he’d tasted her, the flicker had turned to full-fledged conflagration.
What was keeping her? She knew he wanted to speak to her. Wanted much more. Cyrus had been gone a full hour. Darius could not wait much longer—his cock tented the bedcovers.
A tinkle of metal against metal outside his door had him rearrange the pillows over his erection. There was a gentle knock. At last.
“Come in.”
The door pushed open, and Darius’s mouth fell open along with it. A barefooted houri garbed in midnight blue silk stood in the doorway. She was veiled, her hair completely covered, kohl-rimmed blue eyes to match her ensemble the only aspect of her face visible. A bandeau across her breasts barely covered them—the snow-white mounds spilled over the gold-embroidered edges. Her harem pants hung low on her hips, revealing a flat stomach. A raft of gold and silver bracelets covered her wrists, and the maharajah’s ruby and diamond pendant encircled her throat, dipping into her suspiciously sudden cleavage.
“P-Pru?”
“I am Fairuza, master. Your love-slave.” She spoke with an indefinable accent, breathless and buzzing and basically absurd.
Damn Malcolm and his penchant for gossip! Darius and Sheikh Mahmoud had not quite seen eye-to-eye about the disposition of Fairuza. Darius had purchased the girl solely to set her free, and numerous aspersions cast against his manhood had resulted in a hasty exit from Alexandria. The sheikh had felt tricked, but it seemed to Darius that no fourteen-year-old girl should have to submit to sexual degradation. Mahmoud was not a nice man.
“Good God! Aren’t you cold?”
“My master will warm me,” Pru said as she jingled and clinked her way across the carpet.
“I see what you’re trying to do, and I won’t have it! You can’t go around half-naked like that at the auction. And besides, your skin is too white to pass for Egyptian.” White like roses. White like fresh snow. White like pure innocence, but somehow packaged as sin.
“I am Circassian, stolen from my village. My father earned many chickens for me.” She paused. “And gold, too, of course.”
“Rubbish. I am serious, Pru. Rigged out like that, you’ll cause a riot tomorrow night.”
Pru leaned invitingly over the bed. Her breasts were barely contained in the flimsy embroidered bodice she wore. “I distract the rich men, no? Or would it be yes?”
Darius flipped away from her tempting bosom. “Get dressed this instant.”
Pru tiptoed around the bed, but her bracelets betrayed her. Darius squeezed his eyes shut.
“I good girl. But I can be bad.”
Darius flipped again. It was he who was a chicken—on a spit, turning from his greatest temptation. “What if your ruse is discovered, Pru?” he asked into his pillow. “You’ll be ruined. Bad enough when I thought you meant to be a regular Jane, in a mask or something. But this—this! Words fail me.”
“Is good. How you say, the cat has got your mouth.” She giggled. “I have better plans for it.”
Darius opened his cat-gotten mouth to object, but the jangling alerted him to the fact that Pru was crawling next to him on the bed. He rolled over to the edge, as far as he could go away from her sinuous body without falling on the floor.
This was unfair. He couldn’t escape her—he could barely stand up. The only thing capable of standing was his cock, which had burrowed into the bedding in fruitless relief. This was not how Darius wanted her their first time—he didn’t want Pru in disguise, but as her fresh-faced, sharp-tongued self.
“I do whatever master says,” she purred.
“Get up and go wash your face. You look like a raccoon,” he said cruelly.
“Is the custom in the harem.”
Ha! He had her now. He rolled back over. “Then I presume you’ve removed your nether hair. Sheikh Mahmoud’s women—all women in the East—do so.”
Her eyes widened. He bet she was blushing under the blue silk.
“Oh,” she said in a deflated voice, absent the accent. “You don’t want me.”
He’d gone too far, bastard that he was. He took her slender form in his arms. “Pru, Pru. I don’t want to bed you as someone else. You are perfectly fine as you are. Better than fine. Beautiful, like a white English rose.” He wiped a tear streaking through the kohl. “God, Pru, I’ve been lying here for hours wanting you. Days. It was all I could do last night not to finish what we started.”
“You were ill.”
“No man could ever be ill enough to resist you.”
Somehow the veil headdress unwrapped and Pru’s hair tumbled onto the pillows. Darius encountered a crackling sound as he explored the luscious mounds peeking from the silk bandeau and pulled wads of tissue paper from beneath her breasts. He balled them up and threw them weakly in the corner. “You are perfect as you are. Perfect.” A sweet peaked nipple worked its way into his devouring mouth, and he tugged and suckled like a greedy child. He could feel Pru melting beside him, heard her gasps, felt her shivers of pleasure. Her hands and lips were as busy as his, stroking and nipping his bare flesh. Her every touch left a brushfire in its wake.
He couldn’t wait for her to wash her face and moved up her blushing throat to her unstained lips. She needed no artifice to deepen their natural pink. Her kiss was clean and honest—there was no trace of shyness or hesitation. Her costume had emboldened her—waspish Mrs. Thorne had disappeared. Pru was nothing but velvet skin and slippery silk and knowing eyes.
He’d lied about the raccoon business. The kohl turned her eyes into aquamarines—clear, bright, dazzling. They were the most beautiful eyes he’d ever seen, and he’d seen a lot of beautiful eyes.
But no one had ever looked at him as Pru had—by turns hopeful and trusting, defiant and determined. She seared him with her gaze as she kissed him, choosing to watch him make love to her until his own eyes crossed.
He might not be able to return her stare, but his body would show her what he felt.
He unhooked the scrap of fabric over her breasts and returned to nuzzle. Her breast fit neatly in his palm, as small and perfect as a peach half tipped with raspberries. He ignored the rush of blood in his ears as he licked and laved, Pru’s fingernails grazing his bare back. He could taste every inch of her and never get enough, but he knew what they both wanted tonight. What they both needed.
His hand slipped beneath the loose ribbon of her Turkish trousers and found nothing but warm skin and damp curls. Her bud pulsed against his circling thumb and her nails dug deeper. Further exploration told him she was wet but very tight, too narrow to accommodate his raging erection.
Darius could not bear to hurt her when she had waited ten years to give herself to another man, unworthy as he was. Stroking gently, he continued to caress and kiss her breasts until her body grew rigid with need. Her hands ripped into his back and her breathing grew ragged. He knew when she spun into her bliss, convulsing and crying his name.
Trembling, Pru curled into him as if she wanted to share his skin, her eyes bright with tears. Happy ones, he hoped. Her hands came to rest on his face, cupping his cheeks.
“I want you. Inside me,” she whispered.
“That’s where I want to be. But you’re no
t quite ready.”
“Then make me ready.”
He couldn’t stand up to walk. How would he manage the rest?
He kissed the tip of her nose. “There’s a vial in my top dresser drawer. Fetch it for me.”
Pru scrambled from the bed, bunching her trousers at her waist. Her rounded arse was deliciously visible through the sheer fabric. She looked as if she was having difficulty walking, too—he hoped he’d weakened her knees and shattered her modesty. She struggled one-handed with the drawer-pull of the tallboy, then with a sigh allowed her pants to fall to the floor. Darius thought his heart would stop.
She kicked the silk from her ankles. She was alabaster in the lamplight, an exquisite statue come to life. Her hair fell to her angel’s wings, clipped straight across. Her bottom—well, her bottom was a perfect pear, and Darius wanted to take a bite although he knew it might shock her. Pears, peaches, raspberries—he was thinking like a bad poet.
Pru rummaged through the drawer, then held up the green glass bottle. “This?” she asked, turning. A single curl fell over her forehead, and she brushed it back. It was a pity she trimmed and pinned her tawny hair back—Darius would like to entangle himself in its rose-scented strands.
“That.”
She removed the stopper and sniffed. “Oh! It smells so—so—decadent!”
“How would a woman like you know what decadence smells like, Pru?” Darius said with a smile.
“I know what I know.” She padded back to the bed, her lovely front on display, her nipples still swollen and pink from his attention. “What do you mean to do with this?”
“It will smooth my way inside you, Pru. You’re very tight.”
Her face clouded. “There’s something wrong with me.”
He pulled her back down on the bed. “There is nothing in the world wrong with you. You’re finely made, that’s all, and I—not to brag, but take a look, my love. I’m rather large.”
Lords of Passion Page 25
